My family spent a couple months exploring South Africa and absolutely loved it! Even better, there are so many amazing things to do there, I know that we have only just scratched the surface. I’m excited for our next trip to the area so we can explore some more!
Places of Interest in South Africa
South Africa has a huge variety of things to do!
Visitors can take amazing (and budget-friendly!) safaris, get up close and personal with penguins, visit some of the best surfing in the world for both beginner and professional surfers, or just kick back and relax in one of the world’s most popular wine-growing regions.
Cape Town, in particular, has been rated as one of the Top 10 Cities in the world to visit and has an amazing food scene, dramatic landscapes and a rich and diverse history worth exploring.
My posts on South Africa
South Africa Tours and Guides
My family decided to tour South Africa on our own, in part because we had a specific schedule that we needed to keep and in part because we had a fairly limited budget. That said, if you have both the time and the money to dedicate to it, there are some absolutely *amazing* tours you can book that will help you to experience the absolute best that South Africa has to offer!
Best of the Best Full Experience Tour
If you’re looking for an “everything taken care of for you” style tour, I highly recommend booking a tour with G Adventures! They are the official tour provider for National Geographic Journeys, and as such they are highly qualified to give you the best possible experience, no matter what kind of tour you’re looking for!
You can check out all the tours they offer that spend time in South Africa on their destinations page, but if you want my suggestion for the absolute best tour for seeing what South Africa has to offer, I would recommend the Explore Cape Town & Kruger National Park tour. We absolutely loved everything Cape Town had to offer and my family’s trip to Kruger is possibly my favorite family trip that I’ve ever taken, and this tour covers both!
Best Choose Your Own Adventure Tours
If you still want a great guided experience but want a little more control over your itinerary, I recommend picking and choosing your tours from the best South Africa tours on Viator. Viator is one of the world’s best experience aggregations sites, and usually my first stop when choosing a tour. If you’re looking for a bit more guidance on what to pick, check out my top 3 picks for South African day tours, below!
All of these are places that you can absolutely visit on your own. However, booking with a tour means that not only do you have your transportation taken care of, but it also means having someone at hand to point out the more interesting bits from each location!
We did a 4-day long self-drive safari in Kruger and it was absolutely amazing!
However, if you would prefer to sit back and let someone else handle the driving, this is a highly-rated day tour in a tall vehicle designed to provide great views!
If there’s anything I regret about my time in South Africa, it’s not taking a boat ride during our time in Hermanus.
You can definitely see whales from shore all along the area’s coast, but nothing beats seeing these giants up close.
Where to Stay in South Africa
Trying to tell you where to stay in a country as diverse as South Africa is probably biting off a bit more than I can chew!
Nevertheless, I do have some suggestions.
First and foremost, you 100% have got to visit Cape Town. It is an incredibly diverse city with beaches, an amazing food scene, wine-country, unique animal and plant life, and one of the 7 Wonders of the Natural World!
Because of the way we travel, we typically try to rent out apartments for the duration of our stay, and Cape Town was no different. Here are some great places to stay in Cape Town!
If you plan on staying elsewhere in South Africa, I highly recommend checking through Booking.com to find your accommodations. I regularly use Booking, and have found them to be an excellent resource for finding both great hotels and apartments, no matter where we are in the world!
Getting Around in South Africa
If you’re not used to doing it, road-tripping in a foreign country can be pretty intimidating. Nevertheless, for most trips in South Africa, renting a car is probably the best option!
My family loved this about South Africa as having a rental car allowed us quite a bit of freedom in getting around, especially on our trips outside of the larger cities. We rented cars for our trips to Hermanus and the Drakensburg mountains, and we had access to a friend’s car for our trips to Kruger and for daily driving.
It’s important to note that South Africa drives on the opposite side of the road as America, but don’t let that intimidate you! It’s pretty easy to adjust.
If you absolutely can’t adjust to driving on the other side of the road or would prefer to let others do the driving for you, Uber is probably your best choice to get around the larger towns. For going between towns, you can either book a flight, or schedule a private transfer. Still, getting a rental car is probably the most cost-effective and fun way to get around.
Flights to South Africa
Most flights to South Africa will end up at either O.R. Tambo International in Johannesburg or at Cape Town International in Cape Town. For our trip, we found that flying to Johannesburg and then scheduling a separate flight to Cape Town was cheaper than booking directly to Cape Town, however, trying to do so ended up biting us.
Our flight to Johannesburg ended up getting delayed in New Jersey, due to thunderstorms in the area, and since we booked separately, we ended up missing our flight to Cape Town. In the end, we paid more to get to Cape Town than we would have, and it was way more stressful!
So! I highly recommend booking all the way through to your destination!
It’s also worth noting that getting to South Africa requires a pretty long flight. It is possible, and often cheaper, to break it up into several legs, but doing so usually means that you will spend hours longer in the air than you would on a direct flight, and also might have an overnight layover somewhere. Even so, the savings can be substantial.
If you plan on spending a longer time in South Africa, the cheaper, multiple-leg options can often save enough money to be worth the pain. However, if you only have a short time in South Africa, I definitely suggest choosing a direct flight, as adjusting after a single flight usually takes less time.
If you’re not familiar with it, WayAway Plus does an excellent job of finding flights at great prices, and gives their subscribers cash back on flights, hotel stays, and even some tours!
Be sure to check them out!